Day trip to abandoned missile silo

Cool. I think it would be cool to go see one in person. You don't get deep holes in Florida, not unless you want sub launched missiles. [Link]

Yesterday tillyjane, the_child and I went missile silo hunting. I’d pulled some map references to the old silo complexes at the long-abandoned Larson Air Force Base in Adams County, WA, near the town of Moses Lake. These are Titan I silos from the early days of ballistic deterrence, long since decommisioned, and now on private land.

The first site we wanted to check out was just north of Bruce, WA, right at the line between Adams County and Grant County. We made a pretty direct drive there, four and half hours to go up the Gorge, through the Tri-Cities, across the Pasco Basin and onto the Palouse. (For those of you who don’t spend time in the Pacific Northwest, that’s quite a stunning trip, with views of heavily forested hills, catastrophically flood carved cliffs, several major volcanoes, arid high desert, and loess hills.) The leaves were in, where leaves could be in, and the weather was gorgeous. We stopped for a Chinese lunch in Othello, WA, then headed up toward the site, guided by Christian, our South African-accented Nokia GPS.

Nearing the site, we did get briefly distracted by a Pullman car. After that, Christian announced, “We are here. Your cell phone hopes you had a good trip,” and delivered us to an empty stretch of gravel road.

Lots of pictures at the link.